… why live in one reality, when you can live in thousands?

Tag: role playing

I have recently undertaken the role of Dungeon Master for a group of friends. They have never played D&D before and I have never DM’d before. It should be interesting. We all have a mutual love of books so I have decided to create a campaign inside The Library of Forgotten Shards – a world that is greatly influenced by Magic: The Gathering. Welcome to my world … Read more ›

So I recently started playing Dungeons and Dragons with a group of friends. Whilst fun and engaging, it made me realise how much I like spending time inside my own head. You have to create characters with depth and background, skills and traits, alignments and motives. It was the most fun I’ve had in ages. This is something I do all the time in my head – I have scores of characters stored in the old mind archives – I used to do it to fall asleep. There were often adventures to go along with each character, each version of me. I decided to create a half-elf rogue, ‘Evannah Lightfinger’.

Evannah is an orphan fresh form the city of Stormreach; stealthy and charismatic, she stole from the rich and gave to … well … herself. She can steal the cloak from your back and then make you swear blind you made her a present of it. Don’t get me wrong, she doesn’t steal for the sake of it: take what you need, not what you want. No matter how stealthy you are, it’s going to catch up to you, get you kicked out of an orphanage, and then an entire city leaving you by yourself and on the run.

As I was creating her, I could imagine the whole of Evannah’s life. I know what happened to her parents (even if she doesn’t). I know who she bullied and who she was bullied by. I know that she was five when she stole her first loaf of bread and seven when she first lifted a purse heavy with coppers. In the time it’s taken to create her, I’ve lived her whole life. Just as I’ve lived the lifetimes of all the characters I’ve dreamed up. Cats have nine lives but people can have thousands.

I decided to write this blog to share with you a little of the fantasy, adventure and crazy I keep locked in my mind and not just because all my friends were doing it … honest word. I hope that someone, somewhere actually reads this and feel like they’re not alone in this fantasy land.